Category: community

The Fall of Box City: Havoc, chaos, and sheer delight with @ChaniTheunissen

Mechanical Dolphin

A special guest joins us on the blog today. Chantel Theunissen, Children and Teens Librarian, Koraunui Stokes Valley Community Hub, and editor of New Zealand’s Library Life, tells us how she orchestrated havoc, chaos, and sheer delight to commemorate the closure of a temporary library in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Photo supplied by Chantel Theunissen. Used with permission.
Photo supplied by Chantel Theunissen. Used with permission.

Let me start off by saying all of my favourite things I’ve done at work (and in life really) haven’t been planned. Read more →

Wondrous Strange at Ann Arbor District Libraries

Mechanical Dolphin

I’m just back from a week delivering training and community engagement for Ann Arbor District Libraries, an acclaimed public library service in Michigan, USA.

The micro-residency culminated in an all-ages half-day event called “Wondrous Strange”, blending play, history, prophecy, technology, art, craft, science fiction, time travel, and storytelling.

Screen Shot 2017-10-19 at 11.22.14.png

Wondrous Strange was an opportunity for the Ann Arbor community to venture into an imagined world blending fact and fiction, and to create their own shared stories and experiences stretching from recorded history into the distant future.

More on my Michigan visit soon, but for now here’s a short video from last Sunday’s session.

This Digital Life @usqedu @thewritplatform: Mums, Dogs, and Inmates

Mechanical Dolphin

The Writing Platform has published my three-part series on the work of Australia’s Digital Life Lab, an academic unit at the University of Southern Queensland exploring our experiences of the digital world.

Part 1 in the series, “Mums“, looks at fake news, parenting decisions, and the information world of new mothers on social media, as researched by social scientist Kate Davis.

baby-600x398

Part 2, “Dogs“, follows researcher Ann Morrison’s investigations into animal-computer interaction, teasing out the implications of a world where animals and digital devices interact without a human intermediary.

cat-600x450

Finally, part 3, “Inmates“, looks at digital engagement in remote communities – principally the Australian prison population – through the lens of two projects: the Shakespeare Prison Project and Digital Life Lab’s ‘Making the Connection’ initiative, led by Professor Helen Farley.

fence-600x432

Find the whole series here at The Writing Platform.

 

#NotEnoughSciFi – Hope and Holodecks Revisited

Mechanical Dolphin

This week in Michigan, I’m leading a series of talks, workshops, and pilot sessions on immersive play and live-action experiences in libraries and other community settings.

To tie in with these sessions, I’ve written a little piece about Hope and Holodecks – incorporating Blade Runner, Star Trek, Captain America….and Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Look, I think one day we’ll get holodecks.

That was what Star Trek: The Next Generation called the interactive, fully immersive spaces where crew members could conjure ultrarealistic, AI-driven virtual experiences of play, sport, storytelling, historical research, or even technical experimentation.

I think one day they’ll arrive.

I think that whatever the library becomes or is replaced by in the future will look a lot like the holodeck. Instead of summoning information in containers like books or web pages, it will feel like an immersive, flowing sensory and social experience.

It won’t be libraries or other knowledge institutions that develop them, though – it costs too much money.

What’s interesting about how Star Trek imagines that experience is not the pseudoscientific technology behind it. It’s how fluent all the characters are in its use.

They walk into that magic space, summon a story or game or simulation, and tailor it to their requirements. Read more →

Artists Ettamodern & Scribbletronics visit University of Southern Queensland

Mechanical Dolphin

As part of this week’s Astronomy Festival at the University of Southern Queensland, we’re joined by Melbourne artists Wendy Catling and Peter Miller, aka Ettamodern and Scribbletronics.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Wendy is an artist, designer and teacher who employs light to create works on paper and fabric – particularly blueprint-style ‘cyanotypes’. Her prints are held in the collections of Warrnambool Art Gallery, the Australian National Gallery, and private owners.

Peter is a composer, sound designer, and audio-visual artist whose work includes sound design for films The Ring and Rango and additional design for Mad Max: Fury Road, as well as a sound installation in the Qantas first-class lounges in Sydney and Melbourne.

I’ve previously worked with Ettamodern and Scribbletronics on the Time Travel Detectives roleplay, which was built around two of Peter’s digital artworks. This children’s event blended steampunk adventure, optical illusions, and tablet technology to help kids explore Australia’s past and the scientific method.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

On this visit, Wendy and Peter will join USQ staff, students, and the wider community to explore new opportunities to work at the meeting point of art, science, and community engagement. Find out more at the University of Southern Queensland’s website.

Marvellous, Electrical: That One’s On The House

Mechanical Dolphin

September’s Marvellous, Electrical newsletter tells the story of Jay, who found himself running the sole pub in a country town of twenty thousand during a year of renovations.

800px-woodstock_hotel
Photo by Gimboid13,  CC BY-SA 3.0

Hear about face-offs with the locals, midnight car chases, and the grim ballad of Scooter and the Teddy Bear, over at Marvellous, Electrical.

Marvellous, Electrical: Lusophone

Mechanical Dolphin

We’re revisiting two previous instalments of Marvellous, Electrical in a new form this month.

My partner Marta Cabral reads “The Dough“, about Brisbane’s baker of Portuguese pastries, in a bilingual version here:

Portuguese speakers can also enjoy Marta reading “Foolaru”, my Australia Day piece from 2017, here:

Marvellous, Electrical is a two-year project in the form of an email newsletter from across Queensland, Australia and beyond.

You can subscribe to the newsletter here and enjoy the full archive at this link.

Ragnarok: permission and design

Mechanical Dolphin

A set report from the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok gives us a healthy reminder about what creativity really is.

The best line in the trailer comes not from screenwriter Eric Pearson, nor director Taika Waititi. It wasn’t even improvised by one of the actors.

Read more →

Code Brown: Design Thinking & Beyond feat. @jeromical / Part 1

Mechanical Dolphin

Blame it on Jerome; it started with him.

Jerome Rivera, aka @jeromical, is Community Library Manager at Ranui in Auckland, New Zealand. He’s smart and thoughtful and highly accomplished, and one of the sharpest dressers I’ve ever seen. Jerome and his wife Rachael form something of a library power couple: she manages Auckland’s central city library and her teams have been responsible for amazing projects such as specialised services for homeless people and bespoke one-to-one encounters with Kiwi musicians for NZ Music Month. But I’ll have to get to the full story of Rachael’s greatness another time, because today is about Code Brown, and Code Brown starts with Jerome.

You see, being a librarian today is about all kinds of things. Access to information. Bringing communities together and giving them the opportunity to share their skills and stories, or create new knowledge. Offering new technologies and the skills to explore those technologies.

But, as Jerome pointed out on Twitter, when you work in a space like a library which is open and welcoming to all members of the public, sooner or later, you end up dealing with a Code Brown. Read more →

Library Island hits #nls8

Mechanical Dolphin

My professional development roleplay Library Island visited the New Librarians Symposium at the National Library of Australia last weekend.

c2gd1k9usaa_j88

Librarians old and new joined forces to explore their work with communities in new, messy, and productive ways.

Going beyond the vogue for design thinking, the safe, fictional space of “Library Island” allowed us to engage with knotty questions of office politics, limited resources, managerial edicts, and library users who are sometimes airbrushed out of “future visions” – such as homeless people or those whose behaviour might be challenging to staff. Read more →